I completely forget how those days of early marriage felt. I forgot whether I loved Rosie, or had any particular sensation about her. I recall only an odd awareness of possessing her totally, her plump body, her cotton petticoats, the prayer book she had kept from the orphanage, her umbrella. It was all mine. She cooked for me every night, my mother having relentlessly instructed her. I cannot remember a word that we exchanged, nor what we did to pass the time. The unborn baby dominated us. Because of the baby, Rosie rested in the afternoons, never went out in the wet, never looked a cripple in the face. Because of the baby, we shared the thin-mattressed double bed every night without the solace of each other.
The baby was to be born in Queen Charlotte's. We were delighted to have within reach so famous a maternity hospital, which had taken the name of George the Third's Queen, who had fifteen children. In the mid-eighteenth century it was providing free lying-in for married mothers, with a diet of brown and white caudle, and infant baptism by the chaplain, which was compulsory. Colebrook worked in the research laboratory attached to the isolation block, which had shed its old walls for new in the suburb of Chiswick, above an elbow of the Thames to the west. I did not see him after my marriage until the end of February, when he appeared one morning in the hall of Arundel, removing hat and damp raincoat and dropping his bag all in one movement as usual. 'I hear your wife's having a baby in Charlotte's,' he greeted me. 'When's she due?'
'In about a week's time.'
'I'm sure everything will go splendidly.' I wondered if he was doing any mental arithmetic. 'Here's something which might interest you, as you speak German.' He handed me a rolled-up journal from his mackintosh pocket. 'I got it this morning from a colleague in Breslau-he must have thought it important, posting it off in a hurry. Take a look at it while I'm in my meeting. There would seem to be something brewing in the Rhineland.'
I unrolled it standing in the hall. It was the last edition of the _Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift,_ the German Medical weekly, published in Leipzig the previous Friday. The issue contained special supplements on tuberculosis and medicine in sport. I was wondering why Colebrook should have recommended it, my eye running down the list of main contents on the cover. The first was _Aus den Forschungslabatorien der I G Farbenindustrie A G Werk Elberfeld_-From the Research Laboratories of I G Farben Elberfeld. Underneath came, _Ein Beitrang zur Chemotherapie der bakteriellen Infektionen_-A Contribution to the Chemotherapy of Bacterial Infections. The author of this modest title was Professor Gerhard Domagk. The following article I translated as Prontosil in Streptococcal Disease. I wondered what 'Prontosil' was. It was written by Professor Klee, and I remembered from Domagk's letter to Dr Dieffenbach that Klee had been testing out 'Streptozon' in Wuppertal. I turned over the pages, starting to translate Domagk's paper, lips moving and finger running along the lines. They seemed to have re-christened 'Streptozon', as 'Prontosil'. But undoubtedly it was the same sulphonamide drug which had saved my hand. The world was at last learning what I had heard from a part-time prostitute in a Cologne slum the night they burnt down the Reichstag.
18
I had no chance to discuss the German discovery with Colebrook before we met in the hall of Queen Charlotte's in Marylebone Road on the early evening of Monday, March 6, 1935. He had just come through the door, bag in hand and mackintosh flapping. He greeted me, 'Hello, Elgar-had your baby?'
'Yes, this morning. Everything seems fine.'
'Congratulations. Boy or girl?'
'Girl. I'm on my way to see them now.'
'I say, those papers by Domagk and Co in the _Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift_ are causing something of a sensation in London.' Coli strode along with me. 'They've even got into the newspapers. I wrote to Domagk for more information, but I haven't heard. I expect he's snowed under with similar requests from all over the world. And of course things are getting a little sticky in Germany, they do so seem to be turning in upon themselves. It's as though they were already at war with the rest of us in Europe.'
'I wondered why they renamed it "Prontosil"?' I had once mentioned to Coli my being one of the earliest cases on 'Streptozon'. 'Or as I suppose the Germans would pronounce it, "Pronto_zeal".'_
'Oh, I G Farben register any number of trade marks-euphonious labels for drugs as yet unsynthesized.' (The name 'Prontosil' had been registered in 1928 with the intention of sticking it on some new sleeping-draught.) 'You know what someone in my lab suggested? It's an abbreviation _of pronto_ and _silentium.'_ Coli gave his laugh, which could fill a corridor. He was a cheerful man behind his solemn manner and austere tastes. 'I must say, it's strange-to say the least-that Domagk kept completely quiet about his discovery for more than two years.'
'Wouldn't he want to be absolutely certain it always worked? It would be cruel to raise the world's false hopes.'
'You're being very Christian. The reason for the delay is simple. I G Farben wanted to be certain they'd got all their patents safely tied up. And they wanted exactly the right moment to market the stuff. I know my German drug industry.'
Remembering my past discouragement, I felt entitled to complain, 'Perhaps some lives might have been saved had Sir Almroth Wright seen the possibilities.'
'You can't blame The Lion.' Expectedly, Colebrook came to his defence. 'This is chemotherapy, of course. But a different sort than we've been accustomed to since Ehrlich first coined the word. It's not like the cure of syphilis or malaria or kala azar. The drug is simple, the administration is simple, and the streptococcus is no rare parasite, but flourishing upon all of us.'
'You mean, it's one of those concepts which stand out like mountains, which nobody sees because we're too busy staring at the toes of our boots?
'You might put it like that, yes.'
We parted, as I turned towards the entrance of the ward. The baby had been born at seven o'clock that morning. Rosie had started her pains early on the Sunday, when I had found a taxi at King's Cross Station and taken her into the hospital, waiting in a room with two other husbands. A well-starched midwife had appeared after an hour or so to explain that my wife had 'gone off the boil' and the baby was not expected that day. I gathered that for the first child the labour pains provided a prolonged overture to the drama. When I returned the next morning they had been trying to find me, and I was a father.
After I left Colebrook, I found Rosie still with the radiance of new motherhood, an expression which can transform the most ordinary girl into a saint, and which I do not believe has ever been accurately caught by painters of the Madonna.
'What do you think of her?' she asked, squeezing the bundle against her breast.
'She seems perfectly all right.'
'She's lovely. Do you still want to call her Clare?'
'Why not?'
Rosie wrinkled her nose. 'I dunno…it's a sort of stuck-up name.'
'I don't think so. St Clare of Assisi founded the order of Poor Clares.'
'Are you sorry she ain't a boy?' Rosie was looking at me guiltily.
'Why should I be?'
'Most men like a boy first.'
'It's all the same to me.'
'We'll have a boy next time,' predicted Rosie, smiling and snuggling up the baby again.
When I returned on the Tuesday evening, Rosie was not in such high spirits, a little tired, but well. On the Wednesday, she was flushed, with a temperature.
'It's nothing to worry about unduly,' said the starched midwife. 'After all, it's hardly unknown for a mother to run a slight temp during the puerperium. Your wife's got a rather nasty discharge down below, which would account for it. We've already taken a swab for the lab.'